I’m starting to see Oracle ECM get mixed with Oracle UCM more these days when people talk about Oracle’s Content Management offering(s). Sometimes I wonder if this kind of confusion isn’t premeditated by marketing managers, but that’s another story.
So, here’s the scoop (and though I say this confidently, I find myself compelled to disclaim that this is the scoop as I understand it, and as Oracle is using these terms as of the date of publication).
For starters:
- ECM stands for Enterprise Content Management
- UCM stands for Universal Content Management
“Oracle Content Management” offerings are also referred to as “Oracle Enterprise Content Management” offerings. In addition to this, there is also a specific suite of products called “Oracle ECM Suite” which is comprised of the following Oracle products:
- Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM)
- Oracle Universal Records Management (URM)
- Oracle Imaging and Process Management (I/PM)
- Oracle Information Rights Management
In summary, Oracle UCM is a product within Oracle ECM Suite, which is offered within Oracle’s overall Enterprise Content Management solution stack.
Perhaps an easy way to remember this is by recalling the unintuitive nature of including something named “Universal” *inside* something named “Enterprise”. As it turns out, Oracle UCM itself is quite a powerful product with many capabilities that you can read more about below.
[learn_more caption=”Click here to learn more”] To drill slightly deeper into Oracle UCM, the following content management challenges are generally addressed with the UCM product:- Document management
- Web content management
- Digital asset management
- Records and retention management
- Portal integrations
- Microsoft SharePoint integration
- Content and usage tracking
- Categorization
- Content conversion and transformation
- Document capture and scanning integration
4 Comments on “Oracle ECM vs UCM — What’s the difference?”
Very nice, yes it can be confusing. To make it even more confusing UCM is called Content server. The content server is where you would install URM on top of it and WCM Site Studio things. Its very confusing but dates back to the Stellent days.
is Oracle Imaging and Process Management (I/PM)same as Oracle Webcenter Imagin (formely Oracle Imaging and Process Management) ?
Hi erni313,
Yes, Oracle WebCenter Imaging is the new name for Oracle Imaging and Process Management (IPM). Are you currently using IPM or considering it?
Also, as you may have noticed, UCM has been renamed to WebCenter Content as well!
Thank you for your quick reply ,
We’re implementing Flexcube in a bank and maybe we’re going to integrate Oracle I/PM and Oracle Capture with Flexcube. I was confused with names beacuse i found that Oracle I/PM is still part of ECM 11g , and UCM is Content Management Server. Is that correct ?